(0, 2) trialities

Abstract

Motivated by the connection between 4-manifolds and 2d N = (0, 2) theories, we study the dynamics of a fairly large class of 2d N = (0, 2) gauge theories. We see that physics of such theories is very rich, much as the physics of 4d N = 1 theories. We discover a new type of duality that is very reminiscent of the 4d Seiberg duality. Surprisingly, the new 2d duality is an operation of order three: it is IR equivalence of three different theories and, as such, is actually a triality. We also consider quiver theories and study their triality webs. Given a quiver graph, we find that supersymmetry is dynamically broken unless the ranks of the gauge groups and flavor groups satisfy stringent inequalities. In fact, for most of the graphs these inequalities have no solutions. This supports the folklore theorem that generic 2d N = (0, 2) theories break supersymmetry dynamically.

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